RIFLE RANGE BOY: Between the prince and the pauper!

Saltburn (2023)
Written & Directed: Emerald Fennel

Growing up, we were engrained into our psyche as if being rich was sinful. The bedtime stories and the fables that were fed to us always put the rich guys as the bad ones. The poor guy will always come out tops with their ‘good virtues’. Stories will invariably end with the rich guys repenting or giving all their wealth to charity, which will put them on a pedestal.

The miser is a villain. The King who gives all his wealth is good, and the one who is a spendthrift is bad. The vagabond who gets thrashed around will have a good life. The underdog will prevail in the end.

We were taught that being poor is favourable and being ambitious is not favourable. We should have a humble and simple life. Wealth is meant to be divided. An individual should not keep too much wealth. Hey, does this not smell of communism?

Now, in its own quite bizarre way, this film is telling us what we were taught is all bunkum. Of course, we knew it all the while. Rich people are not trustworthy just as much as poor people are not. There are good people and bad people in both arms of the economic spectrum. The simplistic view that people of humble backgrounds are more trustworthy is simply wrong.

The film is in England at Oxford University, where Olie, an awkward but intelligent from a humble background, starts his stories with a scholarship. He meets an aristocratic boy, Felix, who is such a star that all the cool kids want to be around him.

The apparently shy Olie is seen slowly transforming into a conniving planner and provocateur into slowly befriending Felix. His sob stories (like the one about his dysfunctional family and his death) melt Felix’s heart. Olie is invited to spend the summer in Felix’s family estate, Saltburn. There, through his scandalous methods, he eventually comes to eliminate each of Felix’s family.

In our day-to-day living, many tell white lies to shorten conversations or to prevent personal embarrassment. Most of us will take what people say at face value and not dwell too much on its truth. They are mere fillers in our daily dealings.

We only realise that we have been taken for a spin after the effect. But then, we would just move on. Life is too complex to carry all that suspicion over people. We would turn up like a Scrooge, just persistently grouchy, carrying a frown and generally fed up with the world, making life a living hell for ourselves and others. We cannot be overcautious, neither can we let our shields be consistently down and vulnerable.

How often have we found ourselves in situations like these - where we, after reaching a certain place of comfort in life, want to pay back to society. Call it altruism or call it ‘rag to riches’ guilt for leaving others behind, we have gone out our ways to reach out to the less fortunate. Instead of receiving tokens of appreciation, we received a lesson in how not to be so naive. Scores of stories can be told of deceit, lies and double-crosses. It may be their way of leaping forward to greater heights by feeding on others’ gullibility. We are their ticket to their glitz.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.